Turbine announces that Lord of the Rings Online will be the first MMOG with
DirectX 10 support, which may be a reflection of slow DX10 take-up by game
developers as much as anything. Word is:

WESTWOOD, MA – January 7, 2008 –
Turbine, Inc. announced today that The Lord of the Rings Online™: Shadows of
Angmar™ has become the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game
(MMORPG) to support the Microsoft DirectX® 10 API and NVIDIA GeForce graphics
processors for stunningly realistic imagery. The Lord of the Rings Online, named
the 2007 PC Game of the Year 2007, now offers gamers with DirectX 10 graphics
cards the most immersive online experience available today.

Players can now experience Middle-earth™ like never before with major
improvements to The Lord of the Rings Online’s graphics, including upgraded
shaders for water, particle effects and lighting for distant terrain. Players
will also be treated to new levels of immersion with the new DirectX 10
exclusive dynamic shadowing features which render realistic real-time shadows in
the vast outdoor environments of The Lord of the Rings Online.

“Turbine has a history of pushing the graphics envelope so we can deliver
state-of-the art immersive virtual worlds,” said Fernando Paiz, Director of Game
Technology at Turbine, Inc. “We began working with NVIDIA very early in the
development cycle so that we could fully leverage DirectX 10 technology to
achieve our goal of creating the most complete and authentic recreation of
Middle-earth. The results speak for themselves as The Lord of the Rings Online
has set the bar for what persistent online worlds can be.”

“The FPS genre has long dominated the race to better graphics but with this
major update from Turbine, The Lord of the Rings Online players can enjoy
graphics as good as or even better than many FPS games. This is an outstanding
achievement and the whole Turbine team should be rightly proud of what they have
produced,” said Roy Taylor, Vice President of Content Relations at NVIDIA. “This
deserves the attention of the entire video games industry and all MMORPG players
everywhere. It points to a future where we will see increasing blending of
genres and deeper, more immersive PC gaming experiences. We are delighted to
have been able to support this work.”

On LOTRO: LOTRO deserves to be second MMO to WoW (as I think it is? this is just an assumption). It is not a bad game, really, but I'd rather take the dated graphics in WoW coupled with the superior gameplay/content.

On Vista/DX10:I've been running Vista on 3 different home PCs for over half a year with little to no issues. It's not a bad OS if you take the time to give it a chance.

On LOTRO+DX10 causing crashes:After being in BETA for so long, that's kinda sad.

Both Vista and DX10 are complete busts."Translation: I HATE CHANGE!! WHAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

On the contrary. I'm willing and eager to embrace change when it's an improvement over what came before it. But in my experience, Vista doesn't qualify. Dramatically higher resource consumption, pointlessly "pretty" functionality that hasn't been fine-tuned, lots of minor and niggling interface changes that annoy rather than improve what XP offered, new under-the-hood components that haven't been battle-hardened by years of patching and polishing, achingly obvious "me too" attempts to keep up with Mac OS X, pointless market segmentation, removal of useful functionality (remember hardware-accelerated audio?), broken compatibility with lots of applications, artificial constraints on technologies which should (and could) work on earlier versions of Windows (hi, DirectX 10!)... Change isn't always good, and my experiences with Vista are awful enough that I'm going to give this entire product generation a miss. If Windows 7 isn't horrendous I may consider going back, but for now XP Professional and Linux do everything I want.

As for the other: DirectX 10 seems more like a revision of DirectX 9 than anything. Most of the new features are evolutionary improvements of functionality that can be performed in DX9 in one or two more passes, and the aggressively new, exciting stuff seems to be sufficiently complex that it will take at least another full respin of the hardware before it can be used adventurously. Even some of that functionality can be simulated using clever tricks on DirectX 9-level hardware at a lower performance hit. Artificially restricting it to work solely on Vista pretty much keeps me from taking it seriously.

I have no interest in downgrading to Vista from XP, but LOTRO is definitely a pretty game. Looks great in DX9. The night sky, the forever horizon, real reflections in the water. Hell, last night I noticed that even the moon was clearly reflected in a lake. Very awesome.

Stand in Tuckborough and look north towards Bag End during the day. Stunning view.

This is a neat effect, and I remember it being done to the same extent in games before DX10 came out. Of course, now that DX10 is out, you must have it to get the effect in todays games...Makes perfect sense eh.

Edit: It also seems rather ironic that he is telling others to get a life when he made several posts on BN on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. What's the matter Jonny, does even your own family hate the sight and sound of you?

Just to be clear...Jonny5 is not only a genius, or very smart, graduated college at 19, is quite wealthy(most would say rich, but not him), and is also a titan of such gigantic proportions he strikes fear into the heart of all who lays eyes upon him.

All in all, the game looks better and good for them adding support for DX10 people. I'm sure in a couple years if the game survives (which it should have no problem doing), more people will be able to make use of the extra eye candy.

Oh .. and Jonny5. While I agree with most of what your saying, just put a sock in it! Just remember that arguing on with people in the internet is like running in the Special Olympics; You may win, but your still look retarded. Just let it go and who gives a fuck what other people think .... unless you enjoy the trolling.

Abstract: Do you have to be smart to be rich? The impact of IQ on wealth, income and financial distress

Revisiting 'The Bell Curve' Debate

Heavier white female workers earn less than their slimmer colleagues

National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979

What's this? If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? Although money and mental muscles may seem a natural match, brains, alas, may be more hindrance than help when it comes to getting rich, concludes a new study in the journal Intelligence."It is still not well understood why some people are rich and others are poor,"